Winning and war crimes: what Eichmann in Jerusalem means for The Act of Killing

In order to complicate facile comparisons between Eichmann in Jerusalem and Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing, this paper argues that each work can illuminate the other if they are examined by the gesture that organizes each: Arendt’s and Oppenheimer’s efforts to humanize their subjects. This approach allows us to understand the motivations driving each work: refining institutional memory for Arendt, agitating for official recognition of war crimes for Oppenheimer. Arendt’s commitment to taking Eichmann seriously is mirrored by Oppenheimer’s earnest engagement with individual perpetrators of the genocide that occurred in Indonesia in 1965–66. Because the regime that initiated these events is still in power, these perpetrators enjoy public admiration for their murderous pasts. Through this film, Oppenheimer is able to describe some of the costs of these unrecognized crimes against humanity–as well as the costs of ignoring an unpunished and so unapologetic regime. The film also reflexively highlights Eichmann in Jerusalem’s continuing significance as a moment of profound resistance to official narratives that oversimplify the significance of crimes against humanity. Rather than collapsing either of these works into a catalogue of guilt, taking them in alongside each other highlights the demands of justice unique to each colossal infraction against the global community. Indeed, Arendt thought the Eichmann trial should have helped legitimate the idea of a global community and support an international judicial system capable of meting out justice across the borders of nation–states. But The Act of Killing demonstrates just how inadequate the safeguards meant to ensure such a process are–the film interrogates what kinds of community current international human rights laws are capable of supporting while imagining a new community in pursuit of justice.